Posted on 09/20/2014 8:27:03 AM PDT by Kaslin
Most baby boomers will remember the summer of 1967 as the Summer of Love, with huge gatherings in cities across the United States and Canada. Years later, Time magazine said that the overriding theme of the Summer of Love was “trust your feelings.”
Ten years later, the message was blasted into our collective consciousness with the release of George Lucas’s movie, Star Wars. In the film, the wise mentor Obi Wan Kenobi instructs young Luke Skywalker to “trust your feelings.”
Baby boomers then taught that “trust your feelings” message to their children and grandchildren. So now, young people are even more divorced from rational thinking than their parents were—a feeling-based worldview pervades our culture.
Fast-forward to today, where those children and grandchildren are now in power. They are congressmen and women, governors, and even the president. They use their feelings to make decisions on factual matters that require logic and rational thinking.
We feel bad for the poor, so instead of creating a rational program to provide them with employment and therefore dignity, we dole out billions, ne trillions of dollars in the form of welfare credit cards by which they can buy alcohol, marijuana, or whatever they may “feel” they need. This reliance on feelings has created dependency, irresponsibility, fraud, and victimhood, to say nothing of trillions of dollars in debt.
Take this whole issue with dealing with a group of murderous, bloodthirsty savages who call themselves the “Islamic State.” Our “trust your feelings” politicians rush to the television cameras explaining that those people are not really Islamic.
But the thugs of ISIS say that they are the true Islam. And furthermore, they say that their beheadings come as a direct order from their religious book, which they say their god gave them. To them, this is very logical and rational.
In accordance with their logic, they will do a whole lot of killing through their foot soldiers and sleeper cells in Western countries, including the United States. They have no emotional investment in these decisions, only clear-cut facts.
When Western politicians that make decisions based upon “trust your feelings” meet the cold reality of Islamist logic, hands down the Islamists will win—that is unless we begin to change either our worldview, or replace our current “feelings” politicians with logical, rational ones.
Back to my question, will ISIS destroy Western civilization? The answer is no—Western foolishness will destroy Western civilization. The instrument used for that destruction notwithstanding.
In these columns I have been raising the alarm louder and louder, but unless this warning is heeded in 2014, 2016, and every election thereafter, I’m afraid our Western civilization as we know it will go down the tubes.
Today, many people are wondering if ISIS will ultimately destroy Western civilization. But before I address that question, we need to take a little journey to discover what Western culture has done to itself.
Beginning with the age of reason in the 17th century, Western culture built itself on the foundation of reason and objective truth.
In the 1960s, however, Western culture underwent a radical transformation. A new way of looking at reality—focusing on the inner, subjective experience instead of objective truth—profoundly affected the baby boomer generation.
In 1967, Dr. Timothy Leary toured the U.S., speaking on college campuses with a psychedelic light and sound presentation called “The Death of the Mind.” He urged students to experiment with LSD, start their own psychedelic religions, turn off their rational minds, and reach out to the universe with chemical-altered feelings to “run on, tune in, and drop out.”
BTTT
No, the lazy, undisciplined citizens of western nations will bring about the demise of Western Civilization. The “Greatest Generation” failed to pass along religious training, a solid work ethic, the value of the family, not the government, to nurture well-adjusted children for the next generation. The Me Generation that resulted has completely botched passing along to their children any valid foundation for living a decent life, resulting in the decaying culture we see around us.
I fear for my grandchildren who have to navigate such a debauched society.
In the 1960s, however, Western culture underwent a radical transformation. A new way of looking at reality
Gasoline, on it’s own, will not burn. It needs to combine with oxygen (and, needs a spark to ignite it).
The universe is said to be comprised of a ball of matter that, gravity notwithstanding, you could hold in your hand. But it needs something else. It needs a spark, and something to react with to produce the “infinite” universe we occupy.
And to drive the point home, imagine taking one of those little bottles of bubble liquid that you can hold in your hand, and making one big bubble. Maybe ten feet in diameter.
Now imagine the bubble expanding to ten miles. How thin would it have to be?
Now ten thousand miles. Now 10 million miles. Now 100 trillion light years.
How thin would it have to be? The gaps between molecules would be so large you could drive a truck...no, a cluster of galaxies through them. They would, for all intents and purposes, be irrelevant. They would not exist at all.
But the “something else” that causes them to form the world as we know it. The green leaves. The sound of a violin. The smell of freshly baked bread, the warm feel of sunlight on your face in the morning - The something else is what gives us the world we live in. And the “something else” enables us to appreciate it.
The something else is God. And the spark is Him speaking the words “Let there be light”. And the human consciousness of each and every one of us is another “something else”, created from a completely different source material and meant for something far greater than what we experience within the confines of this earthly, mortal, biological machine.
For us that accept His free gift, the future is very bright indeed, and the resident of 1600 Pennsylvania is as irrelevant as the leader of a small, insignificant African tribe thousands of years ago.
Though it doesn’t “feel” that way, right now.
ISIS is terrible but why are they being made out to be like some invincible force?
There are so many muzzie sympathizers that it’s far below the surface.
They probably could have taken over Iraq by now without a little help from the west. Do you believe it would be a problem if such crazed idiots were to over take an oil rich country like Iraq? Syria would soon fall too. Libya would be easy pickings for them. They wouldn’t stop there.
Oddly, a lot of folks don’t know that there were a LOT of folks who volunteered to go to VN. Just cause you got drafted was not a guarantee you were headed there. I went in the Navy because my dad was a career officer. He actually swore me in. That was cool.
No, the lazy, undisciplined citizens of western nations will bring about the demise of Western Civilization. The “Greatest Generation” failed to pass along religious training, a solid work ethic, the value of the family, not the government, to nurture well-adjusted children for the next generation. The Me Generation that resulted has completely botched passing along to their children any valid foundation for living a decent life, resulting in the decaying culture we see around us.
Well said.
ISIS is Islam no matter what that arrogant pos occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave said last week
A real army with the correct rules of engagement could take care of them in a heartbeat. Too bad that no one in our governement is willing to enable it.
ISIS is but a part of a much bigger threat — ISLAM.
My husband never got drafted. He enlisted in the army
Some boomers point out that the 60's radicals were not boomers. They were mostly from my generation preceding the boomers. And IIRC there were a lot more boomers in Viet Nam than in the streets.
The blame for the "radical transformation" is actually the fault shared by all including those older than me as "Abe" will explain. There was a hell of lot more to this than movies, Timothy Leary, and drugs.
You initiated a policy to tolerate the Marxist-Alinsky radicals and let them rant; not only has it not ceased but was constantly augmented by decades of infiltration and indoctrination. You now have two Americas. In my opinion, it will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half statist and half free; I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other.
Far more accurate.
Oh I do not doubt that they are dangerous. And I do not doubt either that much of the rest of Islam are in sympathy with them and nearly as crazy but they are not super men.
Libya? Libya is already owned by them or their club members.
Crazed muzzies in the US once more committing atrocities? Probably sometime. It is necessary though. If it shocks the citizens from their sleep and stupidity it will be worth it. It is all that will make any impression on the sheeple that voted obungo into office.
I do not hold my breath though in expectation of the sheeple becoming wise and united. The brainwashing and division are too complete. 9/11 didn’t do it for very long and the effect didn’t last. Watching two huge buildings collapse, the Pentagon hit, an airliner becoming a smoking hole in Pennsylvaina wasn’t shocking enough. It was just another docudrama and sensational TV reporting to so many.
The one we need to worry about is Obama and his crew of commies in the white house.His ignorant self should be thrown out before his two years he has left is up..Make sure the free loader family goes with him..
Islam may or may not be the ax that finally fells the tree of Western Civilization, but truth be told, that tree has been rotting from within for decades.
The Democrat party will bring down western civilization if they can!!!
“The Greatest Generation” experienced two different realities. There was the male reality and there was the female reality. They were light years apart. Imagine surviving D-Day or Iwo Jima and returning home. Imagine raising a baby at home by yourself in the 1940s. Or imagine anticipating an adult life of taking care of the family and home and then getting a 40 hour a week job at the factory. People say that the Continental United States never suffered from WWII. It suffered afterwards.
It follows directly from what this author stated. Western civilization is based on rational thinking and certainty. "Trusting our feelings" has totally messed up the rule of law. ISIS offers certainty, but with brutality. Younger generations are so inundated with brutality in their culture that they accept the brutality. They're filling the void left in their way to vague world. It fills that desire to be part of something.
Man needs to be rational and logical to have a civilization as ours once was. To do that, there have to be constraints on the emotional side of our natures. We need discipline and a feeling of accomplishment and acceptance. It's pretty sad that US and European culture and the countries we destroyed by regime change have sunk to such lows that ISIS is filling the void.
The original TV Star Trek dealt with these philosophical questions. Keep in mind that without very logical and rational Mr Spock the emotions of the rest of the crew would not have allowed the Enterprise to function. The Enterprise is symbolically our civilization, wanting to do good, but needing rules and restraints in order to avoid disaster.
Pretty well said and a reasonable analogy.
My Son once said that if we didn’t have a Bible we would have to invent one.
You gotta have standards but you can’t enforce morals.
“Trusting our feelings” I suppose means anything goes? Funny, so many of my students are uncomfortable when the answer is not black or white. They have become almost like the computers they live by in the world of ZEROs and ONEs. Just a binary world. Anything in between that requires judgement or experience and is not an answer that yields a guaranteed positive outcome is difficult for them to accept. This is a dichotomy though with their personal and social comfort zones where there is a void of black or white standards. They do not have principles that they would die for or die with.
isi_ is a symptom, not a cause.
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